I'm not in it for the clicks. Really. I know social media is addictive. As my wife can attest. As can the screentime usage calculator on my phone.

But I use X, Facebook, Truth Social, and Instagram to ingest news or post on things I hold to be important. I don’t agonize over how to “maximize engagement” or “hack the algorithm” as so many influencers are wont to do (The frequency of my typos can attest to that).

As a result, I am often caught unawares when one of my posts does go viral. Especially when it’s utterly unrehearsed and just raw. Such was the case when I posted a reaction to a 47-minute video I saw on Capitol Hill.

It was the unedited, horrific footage of the October 7 attacks.

I won’t summarize here what I saw. Here’s the post of my reaction after I saw it, which stands at more than one and a half million views to date.